Filing that last report from the department of redundancy department. Now off to cook the rest of the meal. Then back to my computer stuff. Good thing it's so hot out that I don't want to go outdoors or anything. Tomorrow evening should be different--I'm getting my attic ceiling (the bottom of the decking) painted with a special paint to reflect 75% of the heat. I'm looking forward to that!

And she did it all alone! Bravely pushing forward where no man dared to go, holding high her banner (reading, of course, "Exclesior!"), wading through shoulder-deep swamp water crawling with water moccasins and alligators, sleet driving against her skin like needles from a high pressure hose, her eyebrows and hair brittle with rime, fighting off exhaustion tho' every step bid her lay down and surrender to the arms of Morpheus, rappelling down cliffs thousands of feet high with only a bit of fishing line instead of rope, the Mongol Hordes releasing their swarms of poison-tipped arrows, she won through and posted the 13,000th post!

When there is an international shortage of over the top phrases, and pseudo 16th century english is almost exausted, then we will know where to look for the last reserves. Not the politicians, or the struttings tstrs of Hollywood, But Idaho! Her liberies shall be the last shining beacon of vebosity and Rapaire the champion of....

Bugger

CRUNCH!!!

Bugger

For some reason, probably connected with a pothole, my rear derailleur just decided to jump through the spokes of the rear wheel. Both lost. There's £50 pounds of parts as a minimum needed, and workshop time will be twice that...

Loud metallic crunches and sudden stops are not what you want, especially not at speed, with impatient traffic just behind you. And to top it off, the shop I'd just gone to find was shut.

Good damn reason to drive a car. Big car. A Ford Excessive or a Chevy Leviathan or one of them new Humblers from GM. Each of 'em flattens down the road enough that the potholes all level out, and once you're past the road springs back the way it was so lesser people have potholes. And they get good mileage, too: like 35 mpg* on the highway.

what kind of wimpy potholes do they have out your way, Rapaire? Round here the yearlings and older ones routinely chomp up semis and greyhound buses. There are even rumours of the Mother of All Potholes (also known as MOAP that suppossedly gulps down entire AMTRAK trains as a light snack.

well, despite the gravity of the situation you can see the attraction a blackhole might have for a pothole. I'm sure they when their event horizons meshed it would have been space-warping for both of them.

Out hyar in the West, sonny boy, we-uns take anything that'll mess up yer ride in one of them aughtymobeels right seriously. They ain't like a good hoss. A good hoss'll git ya home drunk er sober. Canyon Slim was useta his hoss carryin' him home to the bunkhouse after he'd been elbow bendin' in town. Ol' Canyon would nod off at the reins and ol' Thundermug would take him back to his bunk. Did everything but tuck ol' Canyon Slim in and kiss him good night, that horse did. Then one day he switched to one of them Model A's, fell asleep, and that danged buggy drove itself and Canyon Slim offen a thousand foot cliff. Ruint the car, but the dead buffalo at the bottom cushioned the fall enough that Canyon survived. The doc in town said he had brain damage, but nobody could tell the before and after.

Bunn, is that a bike or a car with that damage? I don't know what the derailleur is (though when I dropped the word into Google, where I'd been doing an image search, this popped up). A bike, apparently. Looks like the wrong hardware for a rickshaw.

I was in fact looking for a good image of the earthly orifice I could stand to swim or drop into.

A derailleur is the mechanism that shifts the chain from side to side, so changing gear. It's several solid bits of metal, so it one of the many, many things you don't want to go though the spokes of a bike.

Nice pictures.Not quite so pretty , but somewhere near Stilly, If they'd ever finished it, not a good place to be standing.

I think that is (the last picture) a sacrificial cenote from deep in the Mayan territory of the Yucatan peninsula. As I recall, these were used for disposing of sacrifical virgins who had the great honor of giving up their lives for the good of the community in order to placate the rasty deities.

I didn't mean the incomplete accelerator. I meant the one before that.

The Texas Goddess and I oncet had a conversation about that bizarre accelerator and the town that went with it...and I wrote her a choon on it...

G A Well, I'd like to tell you buddy, 'bout a place called Boz, D7 G Cutest little town that ever there was, G A It had farms and a feedstore and a real pharmacy A7 D7 G And a drive in movie just for makin' free B7 E7 It had one gas station and a funny old name A7 D7 G A sweet little town on the plain. G C D7 (Spoken: Nice place to raise up some kinda kids, yeah...)

Chorus: G E7 Am You can't get to Boz from here anymore D7 G They tore down the schoolhouse and the corner drugstore G E7 Am There's a twenty mile tunnel running underground D7 G And nothing but memory left of town B7 E7 So don't bother asking for the town that was,

A7 D7 G You can't get from here to Boz!

Now there ain't no explaining how some things come around, The Feds put their attention on this little Texas town, And they came and explained how they would help those folks along With a supercollider that was twenty miles long! A giant concrete tunnel underneath their farms Where scientists would study all them bosons and charms!

(Spoken: "Yes, suh!! I'm from the gommint, an' I'm here to help ya!!"

Chorus

Now,the town fathers said it was a heck of a plan And they voted it in to the very last man They had Federal dollars flooding their dreams And they came up with a thousand Super Collider schemes They planned a Super Collider rib joint and a Super Collider Inn And a Subatomic Lauindromat to wash yer socks in

(Spoken: Then they up an' built thet that Billion Dollar Boondoggle Bowling Lanes establishment!!)

Chorus

So the Feds built the tunnel and it's down there to this day Underneath the long abandoned farms where folks moved away It seems the first billiion all got spent on the plans And the cost of that tunnel, well it got out of hand And before those atoms started running in rings The Feds put their thoughts onto other things

(Spoken: Like a new Super Computer Center, right outside of Penobscot, Maine)

Then the money dried up, and they'd filled in the wells, And the real estate values started sliding toward hell, And the three thousand scientists just moved away And they all got jobs out in San Jose And the cinema ands as station are dry as tombs And the tunnel's full of green mushrooms!

(Spoken: So the Army stuidied out what they could learn from all this ya know. It taught 'em a thing or two. 'Bout the fine art of digging big ditches and fillin' 'em in again!)

Be very, very afraid. The Curse of 13031 has descended upon you. Here are a few things that will happen. This list is not inclusive and in no way can or should be construed as a complete list of what will happen, nor does it constitute a contract, either oral or written, express or implied. The Curse of 13031 is not responsible for any damage which may occur to either the cursed or anyone in the vicinity of the cursed, where vicinity includes (but is not limited to) the cursed continent of residency.

* your teeth will turn green and mossy. * you will no longer be able to play the dobro. * your picks will become blunted. * your income tax return will be audited. * none of your clothes will fit and you will attend church wrapped in a tablecloth. * you will forget to install you upper plate when you meet the mayor. * your spade will never dig. * your sow will never pig. * each hair of your wig will be well thrashed with the flail. * faeries will dunk you in river and lake. * you will experience the BSD. * FUD will haunt you all your remaining days. * you will enter "format C:" at the root DOS prompt.

* All of your passwords and cookies will disapper. * Your souffles will always fall. * Your dog will forget who you are. * Suddenly, you will remember everything that you've tried to forget. * You'll receive a message from God that says, "Ah, ya know, I've had to revoke your forgiveness. Clerical error. Sorry." * You're going to get a draft notice and they won't accept excuses. * Congratulations! The twins are fine! Does your wife know?

May his pig never grunt, may his cat never hunt, May a ghost always haunt him in the dead of the night, May his hen never lay, may his ass never bray, May his coat fly away like an old paper kite; May the lice and the fleas the wretch ever tease, May the pinching north breeze make him tremble and shake, May a four-year-old bug build a nest in the Iug, Of the mudster that captured rare 13031-ake. May his cock never crow, may his bellows ne'er blow, And a-pot or po, may he never have one, May his cradle not rock, may his box have no lock, May his wife have no smock to shield her back bone, May his duck never quack, and his goose turn quite black And pull down the turf with his long yellow beak. May scurvy and itch, not depart from the breech, Of the monster that captured rare 13031-ake.

May his pipe never smoke, may his teapot be broke, And to add to the joke may his kettle not boil, May he lay in the bed 'till the moment he's dead May he always be fed on lob-scouse and fish oil, May he swell with the gout, may his grinders fall out, May he roar, bawl and shout, with the horrid toothache. May his temples wear horns, and all his toes corns, The monster that captured rare 13031-ake. May his spade never dig, may his sow never pig, Every nit on his head be as large as a snall, May his house have no thatch and his door have no latch, Nay his turkey not hatch, may the rats eat his meal, May every old fairy fiom Cork to Dunleary, Dip him in snug and easy in some pond or lake, Where the eel and the trout may slime in the snout, Of the mudster that captured rare 13031-ake.

May his dog yelp and growl with hunger and cold, May his wife always scold 'till his brain goes astray, May the curse of each hag, that e'er carried a bag, Alight on his nag till his beard it turns grey, May monkeys still bite him, and man-apes affright him, And everyone slight him asleep or awake, May weasels still gnaw him, and jackdaws still claw him, The mudster that captured rare 13031-ake.

Then there's the parallel universe of this Song Challenge in which the curses run in similar wise:

May his laws never pass, may the frost nip his ass, In drastic depression may his businesses fail, May his drafts always bounce, may his cats never pounce, May the Council reject him and clap him in gaol!

May busloads of trippers, with mama's and nippers, Come trample his dahlias , make his pacemaker click, May a foreclosure lease cause the rapid decease Of the monster who murdered my beautiful chick!

May his pecker stay limp and his wife be a blimp And his son be a wimp with a cross-threaded dick May his Sundays be stormy and overdraft warnings Stack up on his doorstep in piles deep and thick.

May the tourist-trade swells with their antiquéd bells Harass him to hell with a suit for lost trade May his house lose its power, his watch lose an hour,. His daughter her flower an' his soul lose its shade!

May his landlord be snide, and likewise his bride And his best hand-grown roses blow up and away; May his checks be rejected, his phone disconnected And his dam'd PDA start to write en Francais.

May his groin spring a sprain, may his picnics all rain! May his guilt like a lance burn a hole in his head May he spavine his back and be tortured and racked By hemorrhoid pain, as he lies in his bed.

May his friends borrow money, his jokes not be funny, His dog turn a traitor, and leave him alone, May his appetite jade, and his draperies fade, May his wife turn to ice, and his mistress to stone!

You call that a curse? I have all of those things happen most every week, and twice on Sundays. I remember the curses we used to have, so terrible that even thinking about them is more than most people can stand, and actually typing them out would be inviting the drowning of Mudcat central, or worse.

The Gods themselves drempt up these curses, after that incident. You know the one, the one that took the somewhat longer than the universe has existed for. All those things that come up in the classics, like having your liver torn out by an eagle for all eternity seem like light relief. The curse of 13031 is no curse, merely a string of petty annoyances!

Well, Bunn, if you're going to cop an attitude, and if those curses are so inconsequential, why, then, I wish them all on you! Just to pass the time away waiting for something more interesting to happen.

More interesting? What should that be?A visit from the interesting tree?Or perhaps a floundering mackeral by the sea.It doesn't matter much to meAs long as we will all agreethat intrest is in the eye of the spatula,and it's flippin'::wettness that comes from the inner sanction of the utmost personal part of my vaginal secretions that make my brain errupt with visions of naked men wearing bison hides and raccoon penis hair-pieces while vividly singing stories of past nakes bison wearing, raccoon penis drumming sticsk, by the moonlight, on a warm a sultry summer night lit up by a coleman lantern and laughing.

Do you know what Gluon does to those people who keep on using Bad Language? Do you? Well, if you do, would you mind awfully letting all of us know, as we've been wondering, there's a good chap.

You see, all this uncertainty stuff hanging around that creature means we either know what happens, or when, and as it's all written down in here somewhere, the when is fixed, you see, so we can't actually ever know.

You, you useful fellow, on the other hand probably haven't finished reading back that far, so you don't know when, so you might be able to tell us what happens.

I have a feeling this inclination of mine to adopt a writing style somewhat reminiscient of Noel Coward on an off day may arise from that creature, but whenever I think about it too hard, I have this feeling that just will not lerave me alone, unless I distract it with a bottle of champagne and a pretty girl or two.